One of the things about crowd work that's so exciting is when you discover a character in the audience who's interesting or funny, who you can vibe off of. If someone's got a weird job that you can make reference to throughout, or you can bring that person onstage - humiliate them, or celebrate them! You can put people in conversation with one another. The best is when something that they're doing can reflect back on something that you're doing.

It seems that every generation needs its public, tweedy, literary personality to sell its consumer electronics. To whatever degree I can live up to the Plimptonian legacy, I am humble and proud.

Specificity is the soul of narrative.

In a mad moment, my family and I purchased a home in Maine because it's the place in the world that my wife loves better than any other place or any other human, and so I have committed my life and what had once been my economic security that has now returned to insecurity, to a patch of painful, rocky land on the shores of horrible, cold waters to a place where people go in the summer to experience autumn because leaves start falling on August 1.

I am not an Internet superstar. I am, ironically perhaps, the most old media superstar of all time. My fame is due to broadcast television.

A stopped clock is correct twice a day, but a sundial can be used to stab someone, even at nighttime.

It would be rather naive to imagine that Oprah doesn't have an Earth Evacuation Plan. You know Richard Branson does - his is in plain sight.